


The enchain'd heart

by goosecathedral



Category: 14th Century CE RPF, English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, M/M, Murder, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-08 19:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8858113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goosecathedral/pseuds/goosecathedral
Summary: The True History of the Famous Flower of Serving Men, Englisht from an Antient manuscript in the Classical Tongues, & never before present'd to the publick.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artifactrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifactrix/gifts).



The last drop maketh the cup to run over, so it is said, and it was poured at my betrothal. My father was to me the most generous of men, but he made my mother drink gall for twenty years, bringing a succession of cupbearers to stay under her roof-beam. To marry his only child to the best-beloved of these ganymedes, that he should become his heir and the comfort of his age, was to my mother insupportable humiliation, a poison union flung into the soured vintage of her marriage. So perhaps should it have been to me, but I was ever of my father’s mind on the matter, loving the company of men whose best amities were for one another, and seeing in my marriage the imaginary resemblance of the divine bond that subsisted between my father and his knight.

My father’s death put us in great peril, but our mutual desolation blinded us to it, and when my mother’s hirelings came to the lodge to which we had repaired for some solace and recreation in our misery we were wholly surprised. They had bribed the faithless caitiffs that served us, so though we fought, we were quickly overcome. It is only in romances that two can prevail against a dozen. While I yet bestrode my husband’s body (it being a point of friendship so to serve one down in the battle that I, receiving the education I had, could not for the world have neglected) one of them went to the cradle that held our son and stabbed down thrice with his dagger. In the delirium that came next I was disarmed. I do not remember it well, but my babe’s murderer did not see another hour of life, if I can say nothing else to my credit I can say that. 

I expected only my dishonoured death to follow this last fight, and hoped, I thought vainly, it might follow shortly. They bound my hands before me and led me a little way outside. They fired the lodge with the bodies still inside, denying them Christian burial, and in the midst of infernal heat and smoke the leader of the band turned upon me a stunning grey eye and said, ‘We are Brethren of the Free Spirit, living beyond the law of that journeyman whom the benighted world calls God. We have need of those in whom the flame of the One burns bright, and you are such. Join us.’ 

I said, ‘You are no free spirits but bound to the will of the one who sent you with chains forged of the silver with which she bought you, and so will you be eternally in hell.’ 

He laughed and replied, ‘Even free spirits must feed the corrupted matter in which they reside. But because we are free we never fulfil a commission in every part. A natural woman would finish it for us.’ 

And he took the dagger, still besmeared with my son’s blood, and offered it to me, hilt first. I took it, and he and his companions sprang to their mounts and fled into the greenwood. Being no natural woman, I used the blade only, awkwardly, to cut my bonds. 

I dared stay no longer before the blazing lodge than to pray for the souls of those within. A chrysom child goes away quiet, no matter the manner of its passing, and straight to the arms of God. My husband, falling with the all the mire of profane life upon him, I must surmise toils yet upon Purgatory mount, but he had his wish, oft-expressed in those dim months after my father’s death, that he should not long outlive him. _Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis_. 

Distracted with woe, I walked deep into the forest, heedless of my path except to assure myself I travelled in the opposite direction from the murderous band. In the midst of my misery the same thought returned with an odd insistence: alone now in the world, I must make not only my own way but my own self. 

Around dusk I came to a clearing in which stood a small, soundly-built dwelling. As chance would have it, the two young men who lived there were just returning from their work in the woods as I approached, kindling on their backs and their satchels full of fish, nuts and mushrooms. I must have been a fearful sight, a hag of the dark with my hair singed and my face soot-blackened, my gown covered in blood and my hands still dabbled in the gore of those I loved most on earth, and those I hated. But they betrayed no sign of alarm, because, they told me later, as we ate a mess of trout, chestnuts and chanterelles, I had been shown them in a dream. 

An inattentive stranger might have at first glance thought them brothers, for brothers often are as unalike in looks as they were. One brought up in my father’s house, though, could not so mistake them, even before they began to speak. They had this peculiarity: Maurice, who was tall, black-haired and florid of complexion, spoke only French, and Alick, shorter, with fairer hair and a sallower skin, spoke only English. They understood one another perfectly. 

‘Tell me why you were expecting me. Which of you dreamed I would come?’ I asked. 

‘Quand une rêve procéde par la Porte de la Corne, nous connaissons—’ Maurice began. 

Alick rolled his eyes. ‘He means, we know it’s true when we share, that is, when we both dream it.’ He laid his hand on Maurice’s knee. ‘Let me tell this one, sweeting. Our guest has an early start in the morning. Right. Well. For starters. We live out here in the woods because we’re heretics.’ 

‘Nous sommes bons Chrétians, bonshommes—’ Maurice protested. 

‘Heretics,’ said Alick firmly. ‘Some call us Brethren of the Free Spirit—’ 

My limbs turned cold as any ice and I touched the hilt of the stained dagger at my side. 

‘Ne vous inquiétez pas, midons—’ 

‘Had a run-in with _them_ , have you? So you know why we don’t like the name. They take our beliefs to mean they can do whatever they like. And what they like is wickedness.’ 

‘What are your beliefs?’ 

‘Alors. _In principio_ , après la structure des Êtres immortels dévelop—’ 

Alick leaned over and silenced his friend with an open-mouthed kiss. ‘Love,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘We believe in love.’ 

‘I can see that,’ I said, smiling at Maurice’s outraged pleasure. ‘But what has it to do with me, or your dream?’ 

‘We dreamed that someone, looking like you did, black face, burnt hair and bloody hands, would come to us, and we’d wash, feed and clothe the poor soul.’ 

‘Thank you. Are you sure you can spare—’ I indicated the borrowed doublet and hosen. 

‘No choice. You can’t stay here long enough for to wash and mend the clothes you came in. It’s not safe.’ 

‘No. Anyway, I don’t want to. These are—more practical. And they fit very well, considering everything.’ 

The men shared a satisfied look. 

‘Right,’ said Alick. ‘Clothes are more than just material sometimes.’ 

Maurice opened his mouth, then appeared to think better of it. 

‘And then,’ Alick continued, ‘in our dream, you were the pilot of a ship sailing to—where was it, Maurice?’ 

‘La côte de la Bohéme.’ 

‘There you go, then. That’s all.’ 

‘Oh,’ I said, considerably baffled. ‘I don’t think you can sail to Bohemia. It’s landlocked. And anyway, I’m going to Bishopsgate.’ 

‘Good start,’ said Alick encouragingly. 

‘My father held some properties there under an assumed name. There’s a chance my mother won’t know about them. I hope one of the tenants, a Mistress Broderer, might give me work.’ 

‘Elizabeth? Embrassez-lui de ma part—’ 

I must have looked astonished, because Alick shrugged. ‘Maurice knows _everyone_.’ 

At dawn the next morning we set out for the Old North Road, where I left them for my journey south. Though I had known them less than a day, they seemed like old friends, and I hugged them both warmly at parting. 

‘Au revoir, midons. Et bonne chance.’ 

‘Goodbye, mate. Here—you never told us what you’re called.’ 

It was my father’s name, my husband’s, and my son’s. I could take no other. 

‘William,’ I said. 

‘Sweet,’ said Alick. ‘I mean, it suits you.’ 

* 

Mistress Broderer was a woman of business, and she had all the virtues and all the faults of her class: quick-witted, resilient and inventive, but parsimonious and coarse-minded. I told her that I was my father’s erstwhile serving-man, turned off at his death, seeking my fortune in a place of which I’d often heard him speak as one of opportunity for such as I. 

‘Don’t suppose you can plaster or do any joinery?’ 

I shook my head. 

‘Painting and decorating?’ 

‘No, ma’am.’ 

‘Shame.’ In her London accent the word seemed to convey an even greater freight of ignominy. ‘I got two rooms up there what is useless for guests until those idle beggars come back and finish the job. Haemorrhaging money, them two rooms. You should learn a trade, fine bright lad like you. Tradesmen can ask for what they like, way things are now.’ She shook her head. ‘Ain’t good for the working man, in the long run, all this wage inflation. Destabilises things. Though the good Lord knows when things were ever stable.’ 

‘Oh,’ I said without thinking, ‘back about ten years before the oldest person in the room can remember. That’s when every man knew his place, women _were_ women, if you get me, the apples had a bit of bite to them, and summers were real summers, not like now.’ She looked at me narrowly, then shrieked with laughter. Her mirth ceased as abruptly as it had began, and she looked at me sidelong again. 

‘Well, you’re a saucy one and no mistake. Pity to waste you on scouring pans and tapping ale. Pretty face, too. What did you do for his lordship up north, then?’ 

‘I—was his musician.’ 

‘Oh.’ She sighed and adjusted her bosom in the manner of a much fatter woman. ‘I get you.’ 

That was a libel, for the joke told about my father was that he never drank wine but beer, nor ever ate mackerel but mussels, because he couldn’t bear anything on his lips that hadn’t grown a beard. 

‘No—I mean, I really can play. And I don’t—I’d rather not—anyway, I had to sell my instrument—my cithera, that is,’ I clarified quickly at her raised eyebrow, ‘to pay my way on the road. But if you have something I can accompany myself on, I’ll show you.’ 

‘All right.’ She put her head around the door and called, ‘Eleanor!’ (I confess I jumped.) 

A tall maid came in, moving with the conscious grace of one who is taking lessons in deportment. 

‘Eleanor, fetch the lad Alice’s lute.’ She did so, and stood gravely by while I sang ‘I have a gentil cok’ and ‘Blow northerne wynd.’ When I had done, she turned to Mistress Broderer (who was tone deaf) and nodded. 

For every shilling I earned in tips, Mistress Broderer said, I might keep a penny to my own use, once I had paid for the purchase of a lute. I would have two quarts of small beer and two meals a day, one with meat, and lodging with the other boys of the household in the stable loft. I tried to keep both trepidation and calculation from my face at this announcement, but I must not have succeeded, because Eleanor said, in a soft, low, but unusually resonant voice, ‘Don’t worry, darling, you’ve come to the right place. It’s no ordinary house, this.’ 

Indeed the law misnamed the establishment, for I never saw one run more orderly in all my days. Eleanor became a close friend of mine, and has remained so. She was taking instruction in embroidery and other, more intimate, feminine arts from the mistress of the house. Together we groused over Mistress Broderer’s penny-pinching and abetted one another in retaliation against her daughter, who treated Eleanor with all the casual malice of which a surpassingly pretty sixteen-year-old girl is capable of directing at one older and uglier than herself, and me with all the disdain her kind extend to their male peers. Eleanor’s clients were mostly in orders. They paid the best, she said, and certainly they furnished the best stories. She was regaling me with a long and farcical tale involving the misappropriation of two gowns from the rector of Theydon Garnon when Alice came into the kitchen looking discontented. 

‘Willie, you’re to entertain the party in the Rosemarie Parlour.’ Alice thought that all such commissions should fall to her, though I was the better musician and (some said) the fairer face. I hated being called Willie (and still do) which is why she did it at every opportunity. 

‘Who are they?’ 

‘Some vintner and his cronies. They look _minted_. Better not play any bum notes. Though, on second thoughts, bum’s probably exactly what they’re after. And Willie,’ she added childishly, to make me turn, but of course there was no further instruction. 

At that time, I had worked for Mistress Broderer for nearly a year, and our clientele comprised many in the wine trade, some of them very rich, but never before had I encountered a wine merchant dressed in the crack of Prague fashion, who moved with the languorous athleticism of one who has never broken sweat except in the pursuit of leisure, and referred to himself in the first person plural. Nor had I ever seen a man, my late knight excepted, whose good looks moved me so deeply. It was not simply that his tall, slender form was shapely in every member, though it was, nor that his golden colouring resembled the sun, that every man loves to look upon but is dazzled when he does, though it was, nor that his voice, which he rarely raised above a murmur, obliging his companions to lean very close, was musical enough to raise hairs on the back of my neck, though it was. It was that, beneath a very superficial luxury, he seemed heartsick almost beyond the reach of mortal man, and I longed to cheer him. 

I played ‘Maiden in the mor lay’ and ‘I have a yong suster’, ‘Kalenda Maia’ and ‘Ar em al freg temps vengut’, then some instrumentals. I had just played the first few phrases of ‘A chantar m’er’ when the vintner-who-was-not held up his hand, a hand so finely made that I wanted to press my lips to its back, each of its fingertips in turn, its _palm_. His grey-blue gaze fell upon me, so soft and sorrowful, I nearly fumbled in my fingering. 

‘Why do you then?’ he asked. I gaped back stupidly, for sung words barely have meaning to their singer, only cadence, and I hadn’t noticed that the song begins with an assertion of reluctance to sing it. 

‘They’re just words,’ I ventured. So strong was the compulsion to address him as _my lord_ , or even _your grace_ that I rudely omitted any honorific, ‘It’s just a song. The person singing the song isn’t me. For one thing, she’s a woman.’ 

‘And yet you _are_ the singer. How paradoxical. Do you write songs, boy?’ 

‘Sometimes, sir. They’re not very good.’ 

‘We would like to hear one of your compositions. Wouldn’t we, gentlemen?’ The assent of the other men, all rather older and much less attractive than the so-called vintner, was sycophantically at odds with the nickname terms in which it was expressed, but from it I learnt that the handsome man was called Richard—Dickon, which many men in England are, of course, some of them wine merchants, and some— _not_. 

Trembling with an apprehension not yet fully formed in my mind, I foolishly struck up a song I had been toying with for a few weeks, but had not yet quite completed. Too late, I thought, I must try to improvise somehow, but knew that if I tried to face my audience as I did, my throat should dry, so I looked up to the ceiling, with its painted pattern of rosemary sprigs, as I sang. My song told of a king who went hunting in the greenwood, and spied a lovely hind, sweet as she was superb, with two golden horns. He followed her, fleet as the wind, but she was fleeter, leading him into the dense forest until his yellow hair was tangled all with thorns, herbs and briars, like an urchin. At sunset she brought him to a glade and there she halted, quivering like a bowstring. The king dismounted and drew his sword, but as he advanced upon her, the hind vanished (I admit, the lyric was somewhat derivative of the Tuscan _Laureat_ )— 

‘Stop!’ cried an agonised voice, shrill and harsh, ‘Stop! I can’t bear it.’ 

I looked down to see that Dickon’s lovely face was running with tears. His companions sat mute and staring around him. One, his hand shaking, proffered a square of fine blue linen, embroidered with a white and golden device. The treble string of my lute snapped under my frozen finger with a cacophonous reverberation. 

Dickon dried his eyes with the cloth (I remember in the midst of my perturbation thinking what a good idea it was, to carry a small towel everywhere you go). ‘I am sorry, dear boy. I liked the song very much, and you sang it so well. It’s just that—last year I was widowed, and the song reminded me—’ His voice trailed off. 

I have ever been more susceptible to others’ grief than my own. I might sit dry-eyed through the funeral Mass of a beloved friend, but does someone go to give an oration in memory of one who was all but a stranger to me, and is himself struggling to keep composure, I am all tears. I meant only to say _I am sorry, sir, to hear it. I lost some who were dear to me that same ill-starred year_ , but whatever of woman is in me rose up and burst the marges of my eyes. 

‘Me too,’ I sobbed, ‘me too.’ It was the first time I had wept for my knight. 

‘Why, my boy,’ said Dickon, ‘you are young indeed to have been married, but I was a bridegroom when my voice was scarce broken, God knows. Come here.’ He beckoned me over to the settle. ‘No, closer.’ 

Reaching up, he took my face in his hands, which were like cloth of gold, cool, firm and rougher than one expects, and wiped away the tears with long thumbs. He stood, and the brush of his body against mine made me almost to swoon. He raised my face, bent down his own and kissed me, most courteously but with unmistakable intent. It is a curious virtue of desire, that it may banish dolour or be banished by it. Now I found myself filled with ardour, to possess this sad and beautiful man in his every part. 

His companions did not seem particularly shocked to see him kiss a boy with such vehemence. 

‘Leave us,’ he said to them, with an imperiousness that not even the most august Master of a Worshipful Company could command, ‘we widowers wish to have some private conclave.’ 

‘I must explain, dear boy,’ he said when they had scurried off. ‘I am not quite what I seem. Your song reminded me of the wife I lost not because the hind was her emblem, though I see _that_ commemorated here,’ he gestured at the ceiling, ‘but because she married a man who had the white hart for his.’ 

I fell to my knees. ‘Your Grace.’ 

‘No ceremony. I am incognito here, though I own it is more difficult than I had expected to impersonate a commoner. One forgets that commoners do not have— _people_ in quite the same way. Come and sit beside me.’ 

He put his arm around me and kissed me again. ‘Tell me about your wife.’ 

My heart beat as if it would spring from my breast. But I could not well lie to the King. ‘I had no wife, your Grace.’ 

‘But—’ 

‘It was a husband I had.’ 

‘Ah,’ he said, as if all were explained. ‘I too was widowed of a husband, in a manner of speaking, before I was widowed of a wife. His name was Robbie. My life has been very sad, when you think about it. What was your husband called?’ 

‘William. Sir William Winsbury.’ 

‘Oh, that was—that was a very unfortunate case. We shall renew our efforts to bring the malefactors to justice. I did not know he was married. I am so sorry. And you—I beg your pardon, my dear, I didn’t catch your name.’ 

It was my father’s, my husband’s and my son’s. I could give no other. Indeed, any other would have been a lie. ‘My name is William too, my lord.’ 

‘Sweet William. My dear, my dove, my flower.’ He gathered me into his arms. The amorous play that followed was sufficient to raise a very great heat in me, and in him the _membrum virile_. I yearned to touch it, to put my lips to it, as the fount and spring of English sovereignty, but I refrained until I brought him to understand what make of a man I was. In truth, though, no explanation was necessary, as none had ever been necessary with my knight. He asked if I would live with him, serve him, make his bed and, perchance, share it. I agreed with all my heart. 

Now I am nearly come to the end of my story. I rendered my lord—dear Dickon!—every service in my poor capacity for two years, though I fear I never purged him of the melancholy occasioned by the loss of his beloved Anne. I saw his behaviour become sometimes intemperate and self-indulgent, for a king is but a man, with all the stain of original sin upon him, and then I counselled him as best I might, but seldom well enough. This summer gone, he sent me on an important embassy to Prague, fulfilling Maurice and Alick’s dream in every particular, for it was the ship of state I steered. 

This bright spring morning I received a letter from him, in his own slightly uncertain hand, full of the most devoted expressions of love. He writes also that later today—I look at the date, some three months ago—he must arbitrate in the most foolish and tedious quarrel between the Duke of Hereford and the Earl of Nottingham. He has half a mind to banish them both his kingdom, such boors and bores they do be. I laugh at this absurd and playful jest and, reaching for pen and ink, set immediately to an equally jocose reply—

_So far, then, the story of Sweet William and his King, written this day of St Edward martyr in the year of our Lord mcccxcviii._

**Author's Note:**

> The Eleanor whom Sweet William befriends in Bishopsgate was a real person, [Eleanor Rykener](http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1395rykener.asp), and I hope the [King](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_II_of_England) is recognisable as a caricature of a historical one, but this fic mostly takes place in a picaresque fantasy world bearing no relationship to reality.


End file.
